Shooting Track and Field

[DavidTO]

I'm shooting my daughter's meet tomorrow. Planning on using my 70-200 f4L, keeping the aperture around 5.6, mebbe? Shutter speeds up over 500th, and the ISO wherever I need to be to get that.

How about focus? Servo? Shooting with a 20D, BTW.

Sound good? Anyone with experience have any better ideas? Anyone with no experience shooting track want to chime in?

[wxwax]

Either prefocus or AI Servo.

Have you studied what kinds of shots you want to get? What events is she in? What kind of access will you have? Your choice of aperature will, to some extent, be dictated by your distance from your subject, no? (If you want bokeh) And of course, if you want motion blur you might want to experiment a bit with shutter speed once you get there - so much of that is dependant upon your distance/their speed etc.

Just some thoughts off the top of my head.

[Tmosley]

I'm shooting my daughter's meet tomorrow. Planning on using my 70-200 f4L, keeping the aperture around 5.6, mebbe? Shutter speeds up over 500th, and the ISO wherever I need to be to get that.

How about focus? Servo? Shooting with a 20D, BTW.

Sound good? Anyone with experience have any better ideas? Anyone with no experience shooting track want to chime in?

are you shooting the youth track and field championships in newport beach

[DavidTO]

are you shooting the youth track and field championships in newport beach


Thousand Oaks.

[Tmosley]

Thousand Oaks.

im glad you asked your question, because im shooting the one in newport today for coastal news, and needed some tips

[mercphoto]

Either prefocus or AI Servo.
AI-Servo. But I've had enough experience with a 20D and heard from enough others that the camera has the worst issue with movement directly towards it. Shoot slightly profile, or try to not half-shutter-track the runners and exepct the AF to keep up. f/5.6 should help any AF errors by extending your depth of field.

And of course, if you want motion blur you might want to experiment a bit with shutter speed once you get there - so much of that is dependant upon your distance/their speed etc.
Motion blur and stick-and-ball sports is usually disastrous. IMHO motion blur only works with motorsports. I'd try to get shutter speeds as high as possible.

[gus]

If it was me i would up that shutter to 1/1000 - 1/1500. Just something i noticed with shooting surfers & those downhill bikes. The runners are not moving as fast maybe but limbs are. I shot those bikes at pretty well all f4.5. I use AI servo all the time.

[DavidTO]

Thanks, all! Hopefully I'll have something worth posting.

[wxwax]

Motion blur and stick-and-ball sports is usually disastrous. IMHO motion blur only works with motorsports. I'd try to get shutter speeds as high as possible.
Track and field. :deal

http://wxwax.smugmug.com/photos/5299080-M.jpg

[DavidTO]

Shots are posted in this thread (http://www.dgrin.com/showthread.php?t=32590). I'd love some feedback.